The present invention relates to electronic commerce and more particularly to systems and methods for conducting electronic commerce between individuals.
Consumers today have a large number of payment choices when purchasing goods or services in person at merchant storefront locations or in mail-order or telephone commerce (referred to herein as “physical world” transactions). For example, most merchants in these transactions accept cash, checks, travelers checks, money orders, and a variety of payment cards, including debit cards, credit cards, and even smart cards. Most consumers have one or more payment cards in their wallet as well as cash and checks. With access to these forms of payment, a consumer can purchase almost any good or service from any merchant.
Consumers also have a large number of choices of how to purchase goods from other individuals in the physical world. For example, at a garage sale, a consumer can choose to hand a seller cash, a personal check, a travelers check, or a money order for goods being sold at the garage sale. The seller can choose to accept or not to accept the purchaser's check based on information available to the seller at the time of purchase. Individuals who are not merchants are not able to accept payment cards for purchases because of payment rules established by banks and card associations which, essentially, limit payment card acceptance to qualified merchants.
Many existing forms of payments in the physical world depend upon the seller's ability to trust, or to identify the buyer. For example, a merchant may require a form of identification before accepting a consumer's check for payment. A catalog merchant may wait until a consumer's check has cleared or a payment card transaction has been authorized before shipping the goods to the consumer. A person selling goods to another individual (e.g., at a garage sale, etc.), may require an even greater number of forms of identification from a prospective buyer who chooses to use a check or may simply insist on cash as the only accepted form of payment. Consumers have learned to accept and live with these limitations in the physical world, partly because of the benefits they provide (e.g., greater convenience in form and mode of payment, etc.). The reduced fraud losses made possible by the use of existing payment systems directly benefits banks and merchants and indirectly benefits consumers in the form of reduced transaction costs.
Another aspect of buying and selling goods in the physical world is the consumer's ability to inspect the goods before paying for them. For example, a consumer interested in buying a used television at a garage sale may inspect it before purchasing it. If, upon inspection, it turns out that the television is does not work properly, the purchaser can choose not to buy it or to offer the seller a lower price.
Recently, advances in technology have opened up new marketplaces. In particular, the Internet has developed into a new means by which consumers can access and purchase information, communicate and pay for services, and acquire and pay for goods. Because of the anonymous nature of communication networks, new methods and systems must be developed to substitute for existing procedures used in physical world transactions.
A number of new technologies have been developed to allow payments over the Internet. For example, the Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) specification has been developed to allow customers to make payment card transactions securely over the Internet. The SET protocol, however, is intended for use between consumers and merchants. Other protocols and tools have also been developed to enable transactions to be conducted over the Internet, but these methods are again limited to transactions conducted between consumers and merchants.
None of these existing systems are designed to permit transactions to be conducted between individuals. So-called “stored value” smart card systems have been developed which may be used to conduct commerce between individuals, such as the Net1 system described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,175,416. In general, these smart card systems utilize electronic purses which contain tokens representing value which may be passed from one consumer to another. However, these chip card-based stored value smart card systems are not yet in widespread use in the U.S. or in other countries around the world. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a method and system which allows individuals to conduct transactions with other individuals using existing payment cards.
This need increases as new trading places develop on the Internet. A recent phenomenon is the development of auction sites and classified ad sites where individuals can sell goods to other individuals over the Internet. Unfortunately, there is no widely-available payment scheme that is well-suited for these types of transactions. Most auction or classified ad sites require that a money order or cashiers check be delivered to the seller before the seller needs to ship the product. This places a great risk of loss on the buyer who has little or no recourse if the goods are damaged or not even shipped. Unlike the garage sale buyer in the physical world who has a chance to inspect and test the merchandise before paying for it, the auction site or classified ad site buyer in the Internet world must currently proceed on faith that the seller has honestly and accurately represented the quality and state of the goods to be purchased. Further, it is inconvenient, slow and costly for the buyer to purchase goods using a cashier's check or money order. It would be desirable to provide a method and system allowing a consumer to purchase goods from another non-merchant individual without needing to go through the process of obtaining a cashier's check or money order or waiting for the payment to be mailed to the seller.
At least one company, recognizing this problem, has developed an “escrow” service designed to facilitate payment between individuals for Internet transactions (see, e.g., the system described at www.iescrow.com). In these escrow type systems, the buyer pays the escrow company the amount agreed-upon between the buyer and seller. After the seller has shipped the goods to the buyer and the buyer has had a reasonable chance to inspect the items(s), the escrow company pays the seller (minus a commission). Unfortunately, however, this form of an escrow service introduces new problems and complexity into the purchase process: the escrow service provider is actually the entity being paid for the goods; the escrow company is a third party to the transaction and is a company that is generally not known to the buyer and seller; or the escrow company may be paid by the buyer yet somehow fail to pay the seller.
Further, the escrow service provider typically pays the seller using a check or money order. This can be an inconvenient and slow process for the seller, who would like to be paid quickly and conveniently. The commission charged by the escrow service, which can be relatively large, is a deterrent to many buyers and sellers, especially where the transaction involves a small dollar amount (e.g. less than $20). Commissions and shipping can add 50% or more to the cost of purchasing an item. One reason that these escrow services charge such a high commission is the relatively high overhead expense required to receive and generate payments via checks and money orders.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a system and method for allowing individual consumers to advertise and sell their goods to other individual consumers which allows the efficient use of existing payment cards to facilitate the transaction. Further, it is desirable to allow the purchase amount to be directly credited to a seller's payment card account. The system should be easily integrated into Internet commerce and package shipping web sites.